Gaze into the future with us, foreshadowed by a company called MatrixStream. These wizards teased us with their 1080p HD streaming box 18 months ago, bragging about how it lets you instantly watch 1080p videos over a broadband connection. Fast-forward to today, and now they're announcing the streaming of a grisly-sounding zombie movie from 2006 called Shadow: Dead Riot. Such is the business of walled-garden TV networking. So as the company waits for the content to catch up, their 1080p on-demand hardware and software sounds like it's enormously powerful.

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As we mentioned when we first introduced the MatrixStream to you, the catch to obtaining this remarkable streaming H.264 video using MatrixStream's MX-1 set-top box (pictured above) is that you must have a 6Mbps (megabit-per-second) broadband connection. That's what it'll take to watch 1080p videos on the system, and not a megabit less. For 720p HD, you'll need 3Mb, and for regular old 480p DVD-looking stuff, that'll need 1.5Mb per second.

Well, and then there's that other catch, enticing content creators to allow their movies to be moved over the thing. We're not holding our collective breath waiting for that to happen. But it gives you a good look at what might be pretty commonplace two or three years from now.

Reminds us of Vudu, doing almost exactly the same thing with standard def, with HD (albeit 1080i) downloading available now and instant HD reportedly on the way. Even though the $400 Vudu set-top box also has content issues, still, the future looks bright for this kind of tech. [MatrixStream]